Black mother and daughter thank Biden for path to home ownership

A Black mother and her daughter expressed their appreciation to President Joe Biden for helping them realize their dream of owning a home in Las Vegas with the support of the $1.9 trillion stimulus package passed in 2021.

In a White House video released Wednesday, mother and daughter met and thanked Biden for implementing a program that helped them buy their first home.

“Joe Biden’s American Rescue Plan helped us make the first down payment on our house,” daughter Ikina said within the video sent to the president’s social media accounts.

Latreca Pryor, a 54-year-old single mother, explained that she moved from Chicago to Las Vegas to be closer to her mother and sister. Wanting to own a home inside five years of moving in, she took a course during which participants learned how to plan a budget and improve their creditworthiness. The course was organized through a Nevada housing program funded by the American Rescue Plan, which Biden signed into law to stabilize the economy after the 2020 pandemic shutdown.

“Within a year, I qualified,” said Pryor, who proudly showed off her certificate. “(The) American Rescue Plan gave me $15,000 for the first down payment on a house.”

Pryor and Ikina met Biden during his visit to Las Vegas last week and thanked him for helping them make homeownership a reality. Pryor, a hospital employee who belongs to the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), admitted she was initially “nervous” about meeting the president.

“When he grabbed my hand and shook it, I felt very calm,” she said.

“He’s like one of those people you feel like you can talk to all the time. He was very caring,” Ikina said. Biden gave her a plant that she plans to grow in her latest bedroom – the primary one she has with a window.

“Now that I have access to sunlight, I can nurture the plant that Joe Biden gave me,” she added.

Twirling her hair into pink curls, Ikina added: “It gives me space to be creative and a room that reflects my personality.”

“I was going to bring you a tree, but I bought a plant,” Biden said.

Pryor said she and her daughter have been “really, really happy” since securing their first home. Ikina said that this moment felt like a “new chapter” of their lives.

In his post beneath the video, Biden said his administration “will continue to work to lower housing costs because every family deserves a place to call home.”

According to the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, U.S. home prices skyrocketed from summer 2020 to 2022 data, leading to high costs with limited housing supplies. While Black homeownership has increased barely through the pandemic amid historically low rates of interest, racial disparities in homeownership persist, with Black homeowners facing more cost burden than every other racial group.

Through the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Biden-Harris administration has sought to address the high cost of housing for home owners, buyers and renters.

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The agency reduced annual mortgage insurance premiums through the Federal Housing Administration (FHA), which insures home mortgages for hundreds of thousands of Americans annually. Other efforts include changing the way in which student loan debt is calculated under FHA insurance to avoid unfairly disfavoring borrowers applying for a mortgage, providing counseling sessions for potential homebuyers (just like the one utilized by Pryor), and establishing programs for homebuyers for the primary time.

In his State of the Union speech, Biden proposed a $400 monthly tax credit for homeowners for two years. The president also called for higher tax rates on wealthy Americans and corporations to pay for his economic agenda.

As the 2024 election cycle heats up and Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris work to prove Black voters ahead of November, videos highlighting their administration’s actions over the past three years are seen as an efficient tool.

“This is a continuation of a really smart strategy by the Biden campaign apparatus to really advocate and tell the story of how President Biden is impacting the lives of Black voters through real people,” said Joel Payne, a Democratic strategist who worked on Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign r.

Last month a video Biden’s visit to Raleigh, North Carolina, home of Black father Eric Fitts and his two sons, has gone viral. The Biden administration has forgiven Fitts’ $125,000 in student loans.

“The president didn’t just pay lip service as he campaigned to restore the soul of this nation. Restoring the soul of the nation included investing in America’s middle class and rebuilding our economy from the inside and the bottom up.”

Payne said Team Biden-Harris and the Democratic Party are essentially starting to put money into “micro-storytelling” like those of Pryor and Ikina in Las Vegas and Fitts in Raleigh. Payne noted that addressing economic issues, reasonably than focusing solely on what have traditionally been considered Black issues, corresponding to policing and voting rights, “will be a more compelling message” to Black voters.

“Black people care about housing costs, they care about the economy, they care about paying off expensive student loans and all these other things that, frankly, just like any other community,” he said.